They found me. I don't know how, but they found me. Run for it Marty!
So I'm here on the Libyan border. Tiny Tunisian town called Ben Guerdane, dusty roads, donkeys pulling carts, beat-up old pickups and men in djellabas, bronzed foreign correspondents posing at terrace cafes, photographers scanning through pictures by their satellite transmitters. Beautiful musical call to prayer round these parts, quite different from what I'm used to in Morocco, although in other ways the whole vibe feels pleasantly familiar.
I got in at two a.m. yesterday morning with a colleague. Djerba, where we flew in, is more than 90 kilometers from Ben Guerdane, yet our driver Mehdi managed to cover it in 45 minutes. We shot out of the airport doing 120 in a shitty little Clio and he didn't stop accelerating till we hit 180 and all the doors, windows and passengers were shaking.
This townlet is the last stop before the border, which is where I spent most of the day yesterday. Thirteen thousand people in tents who left their homes with whatever they could carry. It's certainly an awesome sight. The fields for miles around are covered in rubbish and detritus; huge burning refuse-piles are apparently the only solution. I walked out a mile into the scrubland to have a look at one this morning, it was frightening. Rats and cockroaches the size of remote-controlled cars. I think I'll do a piece about the sanitation issue today.
There is plenty to do here. Just walking around chatting to people, there are about a dozen stories I want to talk about already. The border is currently held by Kadhafi loyalists, which in practical terms means it's locked down tight: refugees leave, but no one goes in. And actually not many refugees even leave now: only a couple of thousand refugees came over yesterday, compared with more than 10,000 on each of the previous days. It could be that the flow is slowing up, but most people here suspect many are now being stopped from leaving.
From where we are, there are endless rumours about government-organised tours over the border - propaganda tours, effectively, but still interesting to see pictures from western Libya as long as you ignore everything they're telling you. When these tours may or may not happen constitutes the bulk of the gossip which flies around between the journos in town. Some official has been seen at the border! Put your name and passport number in this book! Talk to that man in the yellow suit! Be at the checkpoint at 10 am! And so on.
For now I'm content to stay this side of the frontier. I have a bullet-proof jacket and a helmet but no real wish to need them. When I left, the office gave me 3,000 euros in cash and told me it was to pay off mercenary groups if I got kidnapped. Brilliant. The guy I'm replacing out here got into a situation a few days ago, managed to get over the border when it was in rebel hands; then it got retaken and he found himself trapped between two armies. He had to pay a group of contrabanders to smuggle him out in a van. "Fuck," I said when he told me this story, "that."
Anyway, for now, here I am. As long as I'm this side of the border I have hot water and internet access so I'm going to make the most of it while I can.
I got in at two a.m. yesterday morning with a colleague. Djerba, where we flew in, is more than 90 kilometers from Ben Guerdane, yet our driver Mehdi managed to cover it in 45 minutes. We shot out of the airport doing 120 in a shitty little Clio and he didn't stop accelerating till we hit 180 and all the doors, windows and passengers were shaking.
This townlet is the last stop before the border, which is where I spent most of the day yesterday. Thirteen thousand people in tents who left their homes with whatever they could carry. It's certainly an awesome sight. The fields for miles around are covered in rubbish and detritus; huge burning refuse-piles are apparently the only solution. I walked out a mile into the scrubland to have a look at one this morning, it was frightening. Rats and cockroaches the size of remote-controlled cars. I think I'll do a piece about the sanitation issue today.
There is plenty to do here. Just walking around chatting to people, there are about a dozen stories I want to talk about already. The border is currently held by Kadhafi loyalists, which in practical terms means it's locked down tight: refugees leave, but no one goes in. And actually not many refugees even leave now: only a couple of thousand refugees came over yesterday, compared with more than 10,000 on each of the previous days. It could be that the flow is slowing up, but most people here suspect many are now being stopped from leaving.
From where we are, there are endless rumours about government-organised tours over the border - propaganda tours, effectively, but still interesting to see pictures from western Libya as long as you ignore everything they're telling you. When these tours may or may not happen constitutes the bulk of the gossip which flies around between the journos in town. Some official has been seen at the border! Put your name and passport number in this book! Talk to that man in the yellow suit! Be at the checkpoint at 10 am! And so on.
For now I'm content to stay this side of the frontier. I have a bullet-proof jacket and a helmet but no real wish to need them. When I left, the office gave me 3,000 euros in cash and told me it was to pay off mercenary groups if I got kidnapped. Brilliant. The guy I'm replacing out here got into a situation a few days ago, managed to get over the border when it was in rebel hands; then it got retaken and he found himself trapped between two armies. He had to pay a group of contrabanders to smuggle him out in a van. "Fuck," I said when he told me this story, "that."
Anyway, for now, here I am. As long as I'm this side of the border I have hot water and internet access so I'm going to make the most of it while I can.